Three Flowers Upon a Grave
by TraitorTatara
Summary: We are the forgotten three. The weakest of the seven. The last to join and the first to die. Now, we will tell you our story…
1. Prelude

This is the prelude. It is supposed to be pathetically short. Get over it.

Disclaimer[INSERT CLEVER AND WITTY DISCLAIMER HERE

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On a road similar to us - beaten and forgotten - there stands a shrine: a statue in the rough shape of a man.

Four red flowers rest on the grave, offerings from the village children to make sure that they rest in peace.

Them, not us.

We never pretended that they were for us.

There were always four: one for the leader, one for the fire-breather, one for the half-man, and one for the doctor trapped inside a monster...

Or was it the other way around?

It doesn't matter, all that matters is that he got a flower, got eternal peace, while we were left to haunt and watch ourselves be forgotten.

And forget about ourselves, swirling into a fire-filled darkness where daemons awaited us with burning sticks...

Until, on the cusp of a winter's morning, we found three white flowers, and small footprints in the snow.

Then we remembered, and wanted to share...


	2. The Metal Man

Nope, don't own.

Please note that some things may not be correct. That is because I do no research whatsoever on any of my stories.

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The blade whistles through the air, landing in the soft flesh of a stomach, spilling blood to stain the already-crimson snow.

The woman, in the last months of pregnancy, screams as her eight or so months of work and dreams are destroyed.

Then she falls to her knees, and dies as grey flashes through the air again, going through her ruined stomach and twisting upward, punching through a lung.

He smirks; it is all too easy to kill humans, made even more so by the fact that he's never thought of himself as one.

He thinks of himself as an executioner, a plague, a Death.

He hears a gasp, and turns to see a child, a girl about four years old, watching with both confusion and tears filling her dark eyes.

She doesn't know what he's doing, but she can sense that it's wrong.

The smirk returns to his pale face.

He'll show her something else wrong.

He's inside the house and slamming the door before she knows what's going on.

Not that she ever will of course, she won't live long enough to understand.

He has a hand on her back; he's pushing her to the floor, crouching down by her as he pulls down his pants.

He grabs a handful of her yukata, ripping the flimsy material and exposing her to both the winter's chill, and the predators that were hungry for something besides food.

He grabs her legs, lifting them up and spreading them, raising them to his hips.

He starts the slow dance of his pleasure and her pain.

It will undoubtedly end in her death, he thinks, anticipating watching her body turn red and wet, relishing her screams and her pathetic attempts to struggle.

She understands pain now, she understands the tears running down her cheeks and the tearing inside, and she understands the scorching agony between her legs.

She understands the feeling of dying slowly, being dropped into the fires of Hell piece by piece as he grunts in delight to the tune of a requiem of pain.

The music plays faster, and then fades into silence.

He pulls out and wipes off the blood with the remains of her yukata before adjusting his clothing as listens to her shaking sobs.

Then he grasps his sword and turns back toward the defiled girl.

He is about to bring the blade down, when he notices the lack of snow inside the house.

This isn't good.

Dirt or wooden floors don't turn red the way snow did, don't seem to carry the scent through the scream-filled air.

He loves the snow, he wishes it would fall all year for him to colour.

But it doesn't, so he has to enjoy it while it's here.

He grabs her by the scruff of the neck and drags her outside, into the pure whiteness that covers sin.

Once again he raises the bloody sword, when something in the distance catches his eye. A pinprick of yellow-red light coming towards him.

He sits and watches, transfixed, the dying girl forgotten.

The light grows bigger and bigger until he realizes what it is, and then it's too late.

It's a fireball.

And it's about to hit him.

Then it does.

And all that's left are the crackles of flames, like daemons' hellish laughs, the indescribable agony, much like the kind he had inflicted upon the girl mere minutes ago, and the smell of burning flesh clogging his nostrils.

He can't scream, he can't do anything except feel himself die.

Slipping into comforting blackness...

Comforting Death...

His mind leaves his body to burn.

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He wakes with a prolonged scream of agony that seems to tear his charred lungs apart.

God, it hurts…

It feels like he's still on fire.

He could be, for all he knows, he can't see anything.

He stays there, writhing and gasping, until he sees an orange light moving over him. He can make out the dim, faded outline of a head and shoulders.

Someone…

Holding a torch?

"Ren… Kot…Su?" He gasps as loudly as he can.

The figure bends over him, and the stench of gunpowder invades his damaged nostrils.

It is Renkotsu.

If Renkotsu is here, that means he's not on fire.

Renkotsu lowers the torch.

He's not on fire.

And then suddenly he is.

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He looks down for the umpteenth time to make sure he's not dreaming, hoping he is.

But he's awake, and a monster.

Metal plates cover him, metal plates are inside him, Hell, he's probably entirely made of metal now.

The searing agony has faded into a dulled ache, and even that is slowly vanishing, but the worst pain is just the sight of the metal masquerading as his hand, his legs, his everything…

Metal is cold.

It's emotionless and unforgiving.

It hates and it's hated in return.

But the real reason that he hates is simple and terrifying.

It's just like fire.

It's just like him.


End file.
